The link among population, climate change, and poverty

Aside from geopolitics, world economic disruptions, and relentless changes, aside from wars and global realignment of forces, the overall climate of the planet earth determines the degree of happiness or unhappiness of the world's more than 8 billion people. The projected world population on January 1, 2024 is 8,019,876,189 or an increase of 75,162,541 people which is an increase of 0.95% compared to that of New Year 2023.

More people means more destruction of forests, more pollutants in rivers, lakes, and seas, and more pressure on the natural habitat as more and more humans share the land, the waters, the air, and the overall natural habitat. It also means more traffic, more housing congestion. It can result in more workers competing for less and less jobs and shrinking livelihood opportunities. If the income of a family remains constant because the size of the farms remain the same, that means less and less food for each member of a growing household. If a nation's economy remains the same or even gets smaller, while its population keeps rising, that could only mean lesser per-capita income and the quality of life suffers. This is, of course, the pessimists' point of view.

The optimists would argue that the more people there are, the more human resources could be tapped to create value and produce goods and services. I remember by late father who was an incurable optimist and who sired no less than 18 children with one woman, my late mother. Whenever I confronted my father about too many children while our house remained small, our cornfield remained the same in hectarage and production, he would always reprimand me and said: "Whenever a child is born, do not look at the mouth to be fed. Look at the hands and the feet, another warm body to help plow the fields, plant the corn and help build the nation." Well, I was a pessimist and a realist like my grandmother. Every time a child is born, the size of the farm should be expanded.

Let's look at the 15 most populated countries: India, with 1,428,627,663; China, 1,425,671,352; USA, 339,996,563; Indonesia, 277,534,122; Pakistan, 240,485,658; Nigeria, 223,804,632; Brazil, 216,422,446; Bangladesh, 172,954,319; Russia, 144,444,359; Mexico, 128,455,567; Ethiopia, 126,527,060; Japan, 123,294,513; Philippines (number 13), 117,337,368; Egypt, 112,716,598; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, 102,262,808. Among these 15 countries, only three can be considered, not poor: USA, Japan, and Russia. The poorest include Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Congo, Nigeria, and Pakistan. The poor countries are also those most hit by famine due to drought and other consequences of climate change.

In Bangladesh, the population density is 1,329 people per square kilometer, the highest in the whole world. Poverty incidence is also one of the highest there with people living in subhuman conditions. This is also the country that is most often hit by flood and other natural calamities brought about by the devastation of the country's natural environment. India's population density is 481 and Pakistan's is 312. Contrast that to the USA which has only an average of 17 people per square kilometer. Russia has only nine people per square kilometer while China has 152. What is the population density of the Philippines? It is 394 which is very much higher than China, the US and Russia. Indonesia has only 153 and Japan 338.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the natural resources are shrinking and more and more people are competing for limited food, space, energy, air, and land. Life becomes more and more difficult as population increases and the weather gets warmer and warmer. The biggest problem is the uneven sharing of resources. Fewer and more powerful people are controlling the supplies while the vast majority of the powerless, marginalized, and voiceless poor continue to suffer in hunger and social injustices. Their only weapons of self-defense are terrorism, crimes, and war. Thus even the rich and the powerful are not secure. The world can explode when the suffering majority can no longer bear the pain of oppression and injustices.

There should be a better solution to the increasingly difficult existence on the planet earth. Humans should come together and reengineer the planet and change the overall paradigm of humanity. That or we all perish from our combined callousness and indifference.